Insurance companies provide a range of services to their customers. For example, an insurance company may offer workers' compensation insurance, property insurance, life insurance, vehicle insurance, and/or business insurance services to their customers. Further, insurance companies often offer related services, for example, mutual fund, annuity, college savings plan, and/or retirement plan services. Customers access and interact with these insurance services by accessing Internet websites and/or other electronic network resources maintained by the insurance company. For example, a user may change a level of coverage, deposit or withdraw funds, and/or change beneficiary information for a given insurance service using a website maintained by the insurance company for that service.
An insurance company may maintain substantial network resources (e.g., servers, databases, and information repositories) to provide customers with electronic access to these insurance services. However, the resources for different insurance services are typically located on different computing systems that may additionally operate on different information platforms. As a result, there is typically little or no information exchange among the individual computerized insurance services offered by an insurance company. The fragmented and disparate structure of typical insurance networks creates many inconveniences for insurance companies and their customers.
Typically, a customer's interactions with the insurance company are fragmented. For example, a user's online preferences and settings (e.g., with respect to a preferred mailing addresses, mode of contact, beneficiaries, and/or bank account information) enacted through one computerized insurance service are not readily available when the user uses another computerized insurance service of the same insurance company. Similarly, a user may be required to register separately for each insurance service and reenter his or her online preferences and settings for each service. The lack of a global profile management framework across all of the computerized insurance services offered by an insurance company inconveniences both the insurance company and its customers.
Further, it is difficult for the insurance company to maintain security across all of its insurance services. For example, actions that are indicative of fraud or trusted behavior with respect to a user's interactions with one computerized insurance service are not automatically shared with the other computerized insurance services offered by the company. For example, a user may act to increase security with respect to one of the computerized insurance services (e.g., by creating highly secure login credentials) in a manner that is not recognized by the other computerized insurance services. Similarly, activities that are indicative of fraud (e.g., multiple failed login attempts or access from a suspect IP address) that occur in relation to one computerized insurance service may not be recognized by the other computerized insurance services offered by the company. The lack of a global security framework for registration, authentication, and authorization across all of the computerized insurance services offered by an insurance company inconveniences both the insurance company and its customers.